A computer system may store data on different types of memory devices. For example, data may be stored on rotating disk drives and data may be stored on solid state drives (SSDs). The rotating disk drives have a mechanical head that physically contacts different locations on the rotating disk to read or write data. Since there is typically only one head, the rotating disk drive can only access data serially at one location on the physical disk at a time.
The SSD drive may access multiple different storage locations at the same time. For example, the SSD drive may include multiple solid state memory devices that can each independently read and write data. The SSD drive may service multiple storage access requests in parallel by accessing data from the different memory devices.
The computer system may create a backlog of storage access requests to utilize more SSD drive capacity. For example, the computer system may queue multiple read requests to the SSD drive at or near the same time. The SSD drive can service more read requests and operate at a higher capacity since less time is wasted waiting for new read requests from the computer system.